The End of Days - Zecharia Sitchin-pages

Page 176 of 319

Page 176 of 319
The End of Days - Zecharia Sitchin-pages

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168 course possible that the royal astronomers of Babylon had come to conclusions regarding Nibiru’s return without Egyp- tian aid, and even ahead of the Egyptians. Be that as it may, it was in the thirteenth century B.c.£. that the Kassite kings of Babylon started to signal, in a variety of ways, their own fundamental religious changes. In 1260 B.c.E. a new king ascended the throne in Babylon and adopted the name Kadashman-Enlil—a theophoric name surprisingly venerating Enlil. It was no passing gesture, for he was followed on the throne, for the next century, by Kas- site kings bearing theophoric names venerating not only En- lil but also Adad—a surprising gesture suggesting a desire for divine reconciliation. That something unusual was ex- pected was further evidenced on commemorative monu- ments called kudurru—“rounded stones”—that were set up as boundary markers. Inscribed with a text stating the terms of the border treaty (or land grant) and the oaths taken to uphold it, the kudurru was sanctified by symbols of the ce- lestial gods. The divine zodiacal symbols—all twelve of them—were frequently depicted (Fig. 72); orbiting above them were the emblems of the Sun, the Moon, and Nibiru. In another depiction (Fig. 73), Nibiru was shown in the com- pany of Earth (the seventh planet) and the Moon (and the umbilical-cutter symbol for Ninmah). Significantly, Nibiru was depicted no longer by the Winged Disc symbol, but rather in a new way—as the planet of the radiating cross—befitting its description by the Sumerians in the “Olden Days” as a radiating planet about to become the “Planet of the Crossing.” This way of showing a long-unobserved Nibiru by a sym- bol of a radiating cross began to become more common, and soon the Kassite kings of Babylon simplified the symbol to just a Sign of the Cross, replacing with it the Winged Disc symbol on their royal seals (Fig. 74). This cross symbol, which looks like the much later Christian “Maltese Cross,” is known in studies of ancient glyptic as a “Kassite Cross.” As another depiction indicates, the symbol of the cross was for a planet clearly not the same as the Sun, which is separately shown along with the Moon-crescent and the six-pointed star THE END OF DAYS